Last Thursday on Jan. 24, in light of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Campus Activities Board (CAB) held an event to provide bagged lunches for the needy.

Kate Smith, senior business management major and Executive Director of CAB, says  the campus community likes to honor the holiday while giving back to those less fortunate. This year’s event held in West Penn was no exception.

“Well, every year we like to do something for Martin Luther King [Jr.] Day and last year we did a brunch for all the student leaders on campus, but we wanted to give back to the community in a more in-depth way this year,” Smith said.

This year, CAB partnered with the SAIL office and reached out to Operation Safety Net (OSN), a medical and social outreach program in Pittsburgh that works with shelters for women, and those homeless and in need on the street. They decided that a good way to give back would be by making bagged lunches that the organization could then distribute to their partners.

“We thought this would be the best way to give back, use that money that we would’ve put toward a brunch and buy all these materials and make over 350 bagged lunches,” Smith said.

The materials were assembled on tables in West Penn for students to come and participate in the process. Each lunch had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a granola bar and a bottle of water.  Allison Hritz, a sophomore secondary education social studies major with a dual in special education, felt moved by the idea.

“I heard about the event via the Social Scoop and posters around campus,” Hritz said. “I love campus initiatives that take part in community engagement and I just really wanted to give back since this is an event honoring Martin Luther King Jr., too.”

She was joined by her friend Madison Corcoran, also a sophomore secondary education social studies major. She and Hritz are both in the club Campus Cursive.

“CAB is awesome for putting this event together,” Corcoran said. “If there are more similar events in the future, I would definitely love to support.”

Smith said she hopes to put on more events like this in the future. CAB chose OSN because they were familiar with the organization and the work they do in the community.

“[OSN] is one we worked with in the past,” Smith said. “We’ve heard really great things about how they give back to the community and the outreach programs that they have so we wanted to work and partner with an organization who would be able to get these lunches to those most in need of them.”

Sabrina Bivins of OSN said that it’s great when people can see the kind of situations people are in of those less fortunate and see it in their heart to give back, especially during this time of the year.

“We get most of our donations in the winter, probably half of our donations occur during the winter months,” Bivins said.

The bagged lunches that students at Point Park prepared will be distributed to multiple centers, Bivins said, with each organization typically taking a box.